Air India pilots being promoted to wide-body planes forward of us: Vistara pilots to prime brass

A Vistara Airbus A320 passenger plane. File
| Picture Credit score: Reuters

Greater than 80 pilots at Vistara have written to Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran and the airline’s CEO Vinod Kannan alleging that they’d been sidelined for promotions, forward of Vistara’s merger with Air India subsequent month.

Within the letter to the highest brass on Sunday night, a duplicate of which was reviewed by The Hindu, Vistara captains expressed displeasure at Air India pilots being promoted to widebody plane in addition to to the place of trainers forward of them. They alleged that this violated the profession development record ready by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for the pilots of the 2 airways for the upcoming merger, which said that for each Vistara pilot promoted to widebody planes, three from Air India could be upgraded based mostly on the employees power of the 2 airways.

Ever because the BCG record was finalised, Air India had promoted 100 captains and moved them to twin-aisle Boeing 787, whereas solely 5 had been upgraded in Vistara, they alleged.

Calling this violation a “transgression”, the pilots wrote that this meant there could be “fewer vacant slots for conversion from narrow-body to wide-body airplanes” as soon as they have been a part of the enlarged Air India.

In his response by way of e mail on Tuesday night, which was additionally reviewed by The Hindu, the CEO wrote that the implementation of the profession development record for Vistara pilots for promotions to widebodies and for the put up of trainers would happen put up the merger.

Vistara will merge into Air India on November 12, when each airways will function below the AI code and flight bookings will probably be shifted to the latter’s web site.

Vistara pilots asserted within the mail that they have been the “authentic Tata Sons staff”, whereas Air India was solely acquired in 2022 and, due to this fact, numerous schemes have been opposite to the “precept of pure justice”.

One other problem that has upset the pilots at Vistara is the mandate to avail the employees journey scheme, a key perk that permits the airline’s staff and their households entry to free air journey with the airline. They mentioned utilizing the date of becoming a member of as the idea to find out an worker’s seniority to avail the scheme would place them at an obstacle, no matter their seniority, just because Vistara was launched in 2014, whereas Air India was a a lot older airline.

Issues have been additionally raised over anomalies in pay and allowances between people with related ranges of service seniority and expertise. Nonetheless, the CEO sought to reassure that increments over the following few years could be designed in a manner to make sure that the disparities are eliminated time beyond regulation such that salaries of employees in the identical cohort “converge.”